ZaYa FF - Sweet Liar[Completed - Page 44] - Page 25

Chapter 25


Aaliya woke after only about an hour's sleep, but she'd never felt better in her life. She had to pry her body from under Zain's, lifting his sleep-heavy arms and legs from over her body before slipping out of the bed. Taking the robe she'd appropriated from the back of the bathroom door, she slipped it on and started to leave the room. But she turned back to stand beside the bed, looking down at him as he slept, limbs sprawled across the sheets, relaxed.

Her life was changed now, she thought. Changed forever. Irrevocably changed.

Last night with Zain had changed her, had made her feel freer inside than she had ever felt. Smiling down at him, she realized that she had been changing from the first moment she'd met Zain. The prim, frightened little mouse who'd ridden in her first cab was not the same woman who had done the incredible things she'd done with Zain last night.

It was odd that she was one way with her ex-husband and another with Zain. Zeeshan had not approved of Aaliya when she'd laughed too loud or been exuberant about anything, whether she was happy about a promotion or a book she was reading or anything at all. Maybe Zain was right and her being anything but sedate frightened zeeshan

For a moment Aaliya leaned over the bed and touched Zain's hair. She didn't frighten Zain because he was sure of himself, sure of who he was and what he was, and Aaliya's vitality pleased him rather than scared him.

A curl of his hair twined about her fingers. If angels were real, she thought, they'd have hair just like Zain's.

Smiling at her own sentimentality, she left the room to go upstairs to her apartment to get some clothes.

The first thing she noticed about her apartment was that the door Zain had put his foot through had been replaced, but she'd known he was going to have it done so it didn't surprise her. After opening the door, she halted, thinking she was in the wrong room and turned away, but then she turned back. Of course this was her apartment, she told herself, but it was now very different.

The walls of the living room were still dark green but now the curtains were of cream-colored chintz printed with big dark pink roses gathered on a ribbon of green the exact shade of the walls. A fat club chair, upholstered in the same chintz, was next to a large couch covered in a rose pink the same shade as the roses in the chintz. An Aubusson rug picked up the pink and green of the furniture. Behind the couch was a long, narrow table of light-colored wood, marquetry baskets on the leaves and the top. Two black papier-mch sewing tables, their surfaces wrinkled with age, were at either ends of the couch.

Walking slowly, as though if she moved too fast, the dream might evaporate, she went toward the bedroom, and upon entering, she drew in her breath.

The bedroom was done in shades of blue, what looked to be hundreds of shades of blue, ranging from very dark to so light as to be hardly discernible as blue. The walls were papered in a stripe of two shades of ice blue and the windows were curtained with a dark blue silk that was almost purple. In the middle of the room was a huge four-poster draped in an airy cotton of the palest blue imaginable. When she walked near the bed and looked up, she saw that the underside of the canopy was done in what she knew was called a sunburst design, with the fabric radiating from a central medallion in tiny gathers out to the edge of the frame. The spread of the bed was a fine, soft blue cotton trapunto-stitched in a design of flowering tendrils.

"Do you like it?" Zain asked from behind her.

She turned to him, so overcome with emotion that she was unable to speak. That he'd done this for her, done this beautiful thing, was beyond her understanding. As she looked at him she remembered the night she'd spent in his arms and she knew that now she was free to touch him, touch him any time she wanted.

Her arms slid around his neck, hugging him to her. "Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you very much."

"Want to try out the bed?" he asked, kissing her neck.

She laughed. "I wouldn't want to mess it up."

"We'll be careful," he said enticingly as he took her hand and started leading her toward the bed.

It was as she was climbing onto the bed that she looked at the pretty blue clock on the bedside table. "Zain! It's nine-fifteen. The furniture is to be delivered to the nursing home at ten o'clock."

"They'll figure out where to put what," he said, drawing her onto the bed.

But Aaliya pulled back. "We have to be there."

With a groan, Zain lay back against the pillows, each of them edged with Battenburg lace. "I'll go only if you promise to spend the afternoon in bed with me."

"If I must," she said with a big, weary sigh.

When Zain made a lunge for her, she squealed and ran for the bathroom, where she pulled up short. The bathroom still had dark green fixtures and the countertop was still covered in dark green marble, but now all the accessories, even the light fixtures, were in the palest pink. Pink glass jars ranged along the back of the countertop and along the wall of the tub; beautiful pink towels monogrammed with SE hung from the racks; and the walls above the green tile were papered with a design of pink roses.

She turned to Zain standing behind her. "Who did this?"

"Juhaina."

"Your sister?"

When he nodded, Aaliya started asking questions about how she'd been able to do it all in so short a time, when had zain arranged it, and how had he known this was exactly what she liked? On and on the questions went as she ran from one room to the other looking at everything, Zain behind her, basking in her obvious pleasure.

During the night she had told him that Banu had told her about his money, and he had been very glad to see that it hadn't seemed to affect her. Now, he thought that he was freed from keeping secrets from her. He no longer had to be careful not to mention the family jet; now he could share with her the good news when a stock split and earned him a quarter of a million dollars; now he could buy her that little gold watch she'd nearly swooned over in Tiffany's windows.

"If you don't get dressed," he said, "you're going to miss the delivery of the furniture."

After one more very grateful kiss to Zain, a kiss that almost made them even later, Aaliya ran to get dressed. It was while she was in Zain's bathroom, where her make makeup was, that she said to him, "You know what really bothers me about that nursing home?"

Reaching around her, trying to get to his shaving lather, he said, "Besides the smell of the place, besides the personnel, besides the ugliness?"

"Yes, besides all of that. There is nothing to do in that place. I don't remember seeing so much as a magazine anywhere. If Jubilee had been put in a place like that and his piano was taken away from him, I doubt if he would have lived past eighty."

Zain looked at the three square inches of mirror that Aaliya had left him and said, "If you hurry and get dressed we'll have time to stop on Fifth Avenue and pick up some books to take to your grandmother."

Aaliya laughed. "Zain Abdullah, is that a bribe to get me out of your bathroom?"

"Will it work if it is?"

"Yes," she said, and after planting a kiss on his shoulder, she scurried into the bedroom.

Minutes later they entered the revolving door of a big Fifth Avenue bookstore. Zain was surprised to see that Aaliya was not only no longer afraid of revolving doors, but seemed to have mastered them.

When they were inside, Aaliya turned to Mike, feeling a little shy. He'd said she could buy magazines, but how many? What with her several shopping excursions, she envisioned her credit card being run through the little machine and the machine, like a cartoon character, clutching its belly and laughing. "Uh, Zain," she began, "what kind of budget do I have?"

"Money or time?" he asked impatiently.

"Both."

Looking at his watch, he said, "You may buy everything that you can get to the cash register within twelve point six minutes."

"Point six?"

"It's now point four."

Aaliya had once read that where women made their big mistake in marriage was the morning after the wedding. In an effort to please their husbands, they often made them breakfast and served it to them in bed, thinking that this morning was special and that they would only do this on "special" mornings. But the man took the breakfast in bed as an indication of what to expect for the rest of their married lives and was therefore disappointed over the coming years whenever he had to eat breakfast at a table.

It wasn't as though they'd been married yesterday, but they'd, well, experienced some togetherness. Now Zain wasn't looking at her with lust, but looking at her as though he were her... well, her husband. He was being patronizing and she didn't like it. No doubt he thought she'd pick up a couple of books and a few magazines, then he'd smile in a fatherly way and say something like, "Are you happy now?"

Aaliya smiled at him. She was going to show him that she wasn't going to be like the bride who brought her husband breakfast in bed, and she was going to teach him a lesson in the process. He was rich enough to afford what she was going to do to him in the next twelve minutes.

"Okay, Mr. Got-Rocks, you're on," she said with one eyebrow raised in challenge as she turned to the clerk behind the register. "I need two shopping bags, FAST!" The bored young woman handed them to her.

Aaliya first made her way to the mystery section, since she knew something about those books. Grabbing all of the Nancy Pickard, Dorothy Cannell, Anne Perry, and Elizabeth Peters books off the shelves, she dumped them into the open bags at her feet.

Standing near her in the science fiction section was a tall, well-dressed man who was pretending that he wasn't watching what she was doing. Aaliya had noticed in the time she'd lived there that New Yorkers liked to pretend that they were sophisticated, that they'd seen everything there was to be seen, but the truth of the matter was that they were insatiably curious - in fact, nosy. They were always aware of what the person next to them was doing, always trying to see something they hadn't seen before, for New Yorkers seemed to Aaliya
to love anything out of the ordinary. It's just that it takes a lot to do something a New Yorker considers extraordinary.

When this man saw Aaliya frantically dumping books into the bags, he asked, "Are you entering a contest?" Curiosity always overrides manners in a New Yorker.

"Yes," Aaliya said. "I'm with a nursing home and I get to keep all the books I can buy within twelve minutes."

At that the man's face lit up. "May others help you?"

"Of course," Aaliya said. Zain had said nothing about others helping or not.

"I might be able to choose science fiction for you and my wife could help with the bestsellers list."

Within four minutes flat, everyone in the store knew about the lady in the contest and everyone wanted to help. Two tall black boys with razored haircuts (one of them with a Z on his temple) asked if she wanted some magazines.

When Aaliya said, "One of each," the boys looked as though they'd won the jackpot. With a jump, they slapped hands, then took off for the big magazine stand.

A man with two children volunteered to select games, and a woman said she'd buy audiotapes. A very nerdy-looking young man said he could pick out videos for her

When the twelve minutes were up, aaliya skidded to a halt before the register with her arms full of Silhouette romances and the stacks and stacks - and stacks - of books, tapes, magazines, and videos in front of the check-out counter startled her. But she wasn't going to back down.

"Is this all yours?" the clerk gasped, her eyes wide. When Aaliya - not looking at Zain who had been watching her in disbelief - nodded, the girl said she had to get the manager.

By the time the manager got to the register, everyone in the store, most of whom had participated in the buying, were standing to one side and watching solemnly.


"I hope you can pay for all of this," the manager said sternly.

Aaliya nodded as the clerk picked up the first book and held the electronic eye over the code bar, but then Aaliya yelled, "Wait!" and everyone drew in his collective breath. Was Aaliya going to chicken out?

"What kind of discount are you going to give me?" she asked the manager.

At that the New Yorkers burst into approving applause, for they recognized one of their own. It was a bit later, after quite a bit of discussion that involved several people, that a discount of twelve and a half percent was agreed upon.


After all the purchases were rung up and Zain had paid with his credit card, the people helped carry the many bags into the street to get a taxi. They had the misfortune/luck to get one of the rare taxis with a native New York driver who told them they could not put all that stuff in his vehicle. There is nothing a New Yorker likes more than controversy so there erupted a bit of a "discussion." Tourists began taking pictures of the real, live, honest-to-God New Yorkers having an argument in the middle of the sidewalk. They'd heard about such things happening but hadn't really believed it was done; their mothers had taught them to argue only in private.

"I did it," Aaliya said when she and Zain were alone in the taxi. But then maybe alone wasn't the right word, for covered wagons hadn't been packed as solidly as this car was. She had two bags in her lap, four under her legs and two behind her back. A Judith McNaught audiotape was protruding from her purse (she thought she might listen to it before passing it on) and gouging her right kidney rather painfully. "Twelve minutes flat. Right on time."

Zain was looking over the very long register tapes. "Twelve minutes to drag half the store to the counter, eleven minutes to haggle over the price with all the gusto of an Egyptian camel merchant; seventeen minutes to tie up three registers and use four rolls of paper, and thirteen minutes to pack the taxi while half of New York gave me directions on how to do it. Yes, Aalu, we're right on time."

Leaning across two shopping bags, she smiled at him. "Do you mind?"

"No," he said honestly, reaching out to caress her cheek. The patronizing look was gone and in its place was again that look of desire.

Still smiling, Aaliya leaned back against the bags. It didn't look as though Zain was going to expect her to be a docile little thing who served him breakfast in bed.

Since the movers didn't bother to arrive on time, Aaliya and Zain arrived only twenty minutes after they did to find Masuma sitting up in bed and giving orders to the three robust young men who were sweating as they hauled the furniture into the room. A doctor had a stethoscope to her heart.

"Lady, we already told you that we just move things, we don't hang pictures," one of the men was saying.

"Well, Nana," Aaliya said upon entering the room, "it looks as though you have everything under control." She kissed Masuma's cheek as the doctor straight-end up, then after he'd left the room, Aaliya started telling her all about what Zain had done to her apartment, then how Zain had bought so many books and magazines and how Zain said this and did that and-

Zain left the room with the doctor. "How is she?"

"Failing," the doctor said, then grinned. "But she's happy while she's here. I wish all my patients had a couple of fairy godmothers like the two of you. But go easy on the booze, all right?"

"She brought chocolates today."

"Fine," the doctor said, then grew serious. "I hope your wife is prepared for Abby's death."

"Yeah, Aalu's prepared for death," Zain said, no longer smiling. "She's had lots of rehearsal time. Lots."

* * * * *
It was three hours later when the telephone beside Aaliya's newly decorated bed began ringing and Zain realized that it was his own line and pushed the appropriate button. After removing Aaliya's ankle from his ear and replacing it with the telephone receiver, Zain said, "Hello?"

"Zain? Is that you?"

"Mom! Good to hear your voice. You sound so close."

Aaliya untangled herself from Zain with the speed of a preacher's daughter caught naked at a revival meeting and sat up primly, the covers clutched to her neck.

"Oh, God, no," Zain was saying, his voice filled with trepidation, then looking up at Aaliya, he saw that she'd gone white - as though she thought he'd just heard of someone's death. Zain put his hand over the receiver. "My family has come to New York to meet you."

After the long moment it took for the meaning of those words to sink into Aaliya's brains, she collapsed back against the bed. She almost, almost wished it had been a death.

"How many of you are there?" Zain asked then paused. "Oh? That many, huh?" Pause. "Dad come too?" Pause. "Great, it'll be good to see everyone and I'm sure the kids will have a good time." Zain's face changed from mere dread to horror. "Mom, Faraz didn't come, did he? Tell me Faraz didn't come too." Pause. "Well yes, of course I'll be glad to see him, and no, Rizwan and I didn't scratch his precious car." Pause. "aalu? Oh, she's here with me."

"Aaliya watched Zain's face turn red.

"Mother! I'm shocked by you. Okay, okay, we'll be there just as soon as we get dr- er, ah, as soon as we can. See you in a few minutes." As he hung up the telephone, Aaliya could hear Zain's mother laughing.

For a moment they lay on the bed, not touching, both looking up at the underside of the canopy.

"Why?" Aaliya whispered.

Zain rolled on his side and ran his finger down her bare stomach. "I told you: They want to meet you."

"Why do they want to meet me? What have you told them about... us? Did you tell them that we... that we...?"

Zain grinned at her. "One of the major reasons I left Colorado was because of things like that call. But it didn't do any good to come to New York, they still know everything about me. But to answer your question, no, I didn't tell them about us, but I'm sure Rizwan did and Banu did and Juhaina and Vajiha did. I don't know why I left Colorado, since it's a regular convention of Abdullahs and Qureshis right here in New York."

She rolled toward him. "Oh, Zain, I'm scared. What if they don't like me?"

"How could they not? I like you."

"But you've wanted to go to bed with me."


"What does that mean? That I'm indiscriminate? That if she's pretty and sexy and I want to go to bed with her, then I'll like her?"

"How in the world can you separate pretty and sexy and wanting to go to bed with someone from liking them?"

Zain gave a shrug that was the male equivalent of, I don't know and don't plan to analyze it.

Aaliya got off the bed. "What am I going to wear? The pink Chanel or the red Valentino or the gray Dior?"

"Jeans. They're in Central Park having a picnic, and there's over a hundred of them."

Aaliya sat down heavily. It would have been nice if there had been a chair placed where she sat, but there wasn't.

Moving to the edge of the bed to hang over the side and look down at her sitting on the floor, stark naked, legs crossed, Zain smiled. "You want to try the guest bedroom before we leave?"

Aaliya groaned.

"Come on, Aalu-girl, how bad can it be? A hundred people inspecting you, asking you personal questions, my mother wanting to know if you're a fit person to live with her precious son, the other wives looking you over, my father-"

She hit him in the face with a pillow.

Yippee!!!!

awesome update dear.
love that aliya finally open up to zain about zeeshan.
also love ZaYa romance.thanks for pm.

OMV omg omv ...two updarw OK I loved how aaliya opened up in front of zain ...their small cute moments aaliyas smartness ...his family ...omg I am waiting update soon and I agree with the breakfast thing...and indeed aaliya had a bad past but a beautiful future...and abdullah and quershis I love them all

And yes I dont imagine anyone else nutcmy zaya my harshika

Ausome update

Chapter 26

It was over an hour before they made it to Central Park because Aaliya and Zain nearly had a fight when Zain wanted her to wear skintight jeans and a red T-shirt with no bra. Perhaps the argument had gone farther than it need have because she'd as soon have a fight as go to the park and be put under the scrutiny of a hundred of Zain'z relatives.

When they finally did reach the park, Zain pointed. "There they are."

It took Aaliya a moment to realize that the group of people she'd assumed was the entire population of one of those oddly named European countries was Zain's relatives. There weren't a hundred of them, there were at least four hundred, maybe five, she thought. Without a conscious thought, Aaliya turned on her heel and started back toward the safety of Fifth Avenue, but Zain caught her arm. Smiling and teasing her all the way from the town house to the park, he seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, so it took a moment for him to see that she wasn't kidding, that she was indeed petrified with fear.

Turning to look at his family, at the zillions of kids running around, at the chumminess of them all, he thought that maybe Aaliya was right to be a little nervous.

"Stay here and I'll get something to calm you down," he said as he started toward his family.

"Zain!" Aaliya hissed at him. "I do not want something to drink!" But Zain didn't hear her or else he ignored her, as he was already at the first table that was set up under the trees. Half behind a bush, half exposed so she could watch, Aaliya saw Zain walk to a woman sitting on a chair under a tree, holding what appeared to be a nursing infant. Zain spoke to the woman for a few minutes, she nodded, then pulled the child from her breast and handed the baby to Mike.

As though the sight of zain taking a child from its mother's breast weren't enough, the fact that no one at the gathering said anything to him was, in Aaliya's eyes, quite odd. She knew he hadn't seen any of them in at least two months and they had come all the way from Colorado and some from Maine to see him, so why did they say nothing when he walked into the midst of them?

A moment later he was in front of her and was offering her the drowsy baby as though he were a bouquet of flowers.

Aaliya took a step backward. "Zain, I don't know anything about babies."

"You didn't know anything about sex either but you learned," he said, smiling lecherously. "Take him."

Looking at the baby he held, she thought she'd never seen anything so beautiful as this pink and white creature. There was milk on the baby's chin, and she used the blanket edge to wipe it away.

"He needs to be burped." Watching with great interest, she saw Zain expertly unwind the blanket from the baby, exposing fat arms and legs, a plastic-coated diaper, and a little shirt. Draping the blanket over Aaliya's shoulder, he then pressed the child to her until she was forced to take it into her arms.

Instinct and desire went together to make Aaliya gather the child to her.

"A perfect fit," Zain said, leaning forward to kiss her mouth softly. "Now jostle him around a bit, thump him on the back, and get a belch out of him."

"Like this?"

"Perfect."

When the baby gave an enormous burp, she looked at Zain with eyes that said she'd accomplished the most wondrous feat in the world, making him laugh, but she could tell that he was proud of her.

"You're Uncle Zain," said a voice some distance below them. They looked down to see a very pretty little girl, about eight years old, golden brown hair perfectly curled and arranged, wearing a divine little white dress with hand-embroidered rosebuds across the front and white shoes and stockings.

"Well, Miss Sana," Zain said, "aren't you the fashion plate for a picnic? Where'd you get that dress?"

"Bergdorf's, of course," she said smugly. "It's the only place to shop in New York."

"Aren't you a little snob?"

Unperturbed, the child looked up at her uncle with flirty eyes and stuck out her foot. "But I got the shoes at Lamston's," she said, speaking of a popular dime store in New York.

Laughing, Zain scooped her off the ground, buried his face in her neck, and began to make disgusting noises. The noises seemed to be a silent call for children, for they seemed to emerge from every part of the park, from behind trees and rocks, running across fields - and they all attacked Zain. One sturdy little boy attached himself to Zain's leg, sitting on his foot, while two identical twin girls took the other leg. Zain held Sana with one arm while she fought the children who tried to climb up Zain, yelling, "I found him first!" Within minutes Zain looked like a Zuni storyteller doll with children hanging off the front of him, arms around his neck, legs hanging down his back, and two boys swinging from the arm that wasn't holding Lisa.

Laughing, Aaliya watched him walk toward the picnic tables, dragging screaming, laughing children with him.

When four children ran up to him and were disappointed that they couldn't find a square inch of Zain that wasn't already taken, Zain said, "Bring Aalu."

With trepidation on her face, Aaliya backed away from the approaching children who collectively outweighed her, as they, with impish grins, started for her. Holding the baby to her protectively, she looked as though she were facing a pack of wolves.

One minute she was on the ground and the next she and the baby were swept into a pair of strong arms. After an initial gasp of shock, she looked up into her rescuer's eyes: eyes that were like Zain's except older.

"Usman Abdullah," he said, as though they were being presented to each other in a ballroom instead of her now being carried by him. "Zain's dad," he said unnecessarily. "And who do you have there?"

"I don't know," she answered, looking down at the baby.

"Plan to give him back?"

Aaliya turned red as she realized that she was still holding the baby as though someone meant to harm him and she was going to protect him with her life. She didn't know it, but that gesture won her a place forever in Zain's father's heart. Usman had never liked any of Zain's other girlfriends; they always worried about their clothes getting dirty, but he liked this one.

"Get your own girl," Zain said and took Aaliya from his father's arms.

"Zain abdullah, put me down!" she said under her breath as he carried her to the table and everyone, all eight hundred of them, gathered around to look at her.

After the first twenty names, Aaliya didn't try to remember who they were, and she was grateful when she saw a few familiar faces: Rizwan, Banu, and Vajiha - who managed to look elegant even in a pair of jeans. Aaliya noted Zain's very pretty mother, his sister Juhaina who had decorated her rooms, and she noticed Zain's oldest brother, Faraz. Faraz looked like the rest of the men in his family, but he was an example of how expression could change a person's features. The honest, open eyes, so like Zain's, were narrowed, as though he were scrutinizing everything and everyone, and the beautiful, soft Abdullah mouth was drawn into a firm line.

As Faraz shook her hand, he didn't flirt with her as Zain's other brothers had, instead, he looked at her speculatively and said, "You will, of course, be willing to sign a prenuptial agreement?"

Putting his arm around Aaliya's shoulders, Zain told Faraz to stuff it as he led her toward the trees. "You've met the worst of the family, now meet the best." As they walked she asked him questions about his family and was told that Faraz planned to be a billionaire by the time he was forty and it looked as though he was going to make it. Aaliya laughed at the way Zain spoke of millions and billions the way the rest of the world spoke of tens and twenties.

Sitting under a tree, a little apart from the noise of the rest of the family, was a very pretty young woman, about twenty, who looked as though she'd stepped out of the pages of a children's storybook. She was the beautiful princess the knights risked their lives to save, the princess who knew that a pea had been put under her mattresses. She wore a long draped skirt of layers of chiffon, a gauzy blouse, and a big picture hat like the one Scarlett wore to the barbecue. Beside her was a straw bag full of romantic novels and on her lap was an exquisitely dressed, picture-perfect baby, who Aaliya found out later belonged to one of Zain's cousins.



"Zunera, honey," Zainsaid softly, "I want you to meet Aaliya."

Zunera looked at Aaliya; Aaliya looked at Zunera. Mike, with a smile, excused himself, for he knew that Aaliya had found a friend in his overwhelming family. Aaliya sat under the tree with zunera talking about books they had read. Within minutes there were four children sitting near them, just sitting and listening as Zunera and Aaliya talked.

One by one the women of Zain's family came to sit with them, so aaliya got to exchange a few words with each of them. She was pleased to tell Juhaina how much she liked the apartment, how the colors were perfect, how everything was perfect. She again thanked Vajiha for helping her that day in Saks and apologized for her navet about the cost of the clothes.

She was a little nervous about talking to zain's mother, and Suraiyya made it worse when she said, "What do you think of my Zain?"

Aaliya didn't hesitate. "Except that he lies constantly, never picks up his clothes, pretends to be dumb when he wants to get out of doing something, and has the ability to be utterly oblivious to the fact that I am doing nearly all the housework in his house, I think my Zain is perfect." There was an emphasis on the word my.

Laughing, Suraiyya squeezed Aaliya's hand affectionately and said, "Welcome to the family," then went off to play with her grandchildren.

In between visits with the others, Aaliya and Zunera talked, or rather Aaliya talked, telling Zunera all about Zain and Masuma and about all that had happened since she'd come to New York.

It was late afternoon when Aaliya felt secure enough to leave the haven of Zunera and move to the picnic tables. It was while she was talking to a young woman named Deena, who was a Qureshi and married to a very nice man named Rehaan and looked to be in her fortieth month of pregnancy, that she had an experience that she never again wanted to have happen to her.

As Aaliya straightened from reaching for an olive on a platter, Zain put his arms about her shoulders and kissed her on the neck.

"Thanks a lot for coming today, Aalu," he said.

It was a perfectly ordinary encounter, perfectly acceptable - except that the man who was touching her wasn't Zain. He was wearing clothes just like Zain's and he was approximately the same size as Zain, but he didn't feel like Zain, didn't smell like Zain, didn't kiss like Zain.

"Release me," she said, standing stiffly in his arms.

"Nobody minds." He continued nuzzling her neck.

Aaliya had done her best to be polite, but she did not want this stranger touching her. As she opened her mouth to say something stern to him, she felt his hand slip down her back to just above her buttocks - and the hand was moving lower. She panicked. "Stop it!" she yelled, beginning to fight him. "Stop it this instant. Let me go!"

Even knowing that Zain's family was staring at her in open-mouth astonishment, she didn't care. Let them think of her what they would.

"Get away from me. Don't touch me!"

Releasing her, the man stepped back, looking at her in astonishment. Everyone was looking at her as though she'd lost her mind.

Just when Aaliya was wishing the ground would open up and swallow her, Zain, walking with a couple of his cousins, a football in his hands, stepped into view, and she ran to him.

Putting his arm about her protectively, he held her, but from the way he was laughing, she had no doubt that he'd known all along that another man planned to touch her. "Aalu, honey, meet my twin brother, Zaid."

Zain was grinning at her, as was Zaid, and they seemed to expect her to smile at the two of them and forgive them their little deception. She had no doubt that this game of pretending with each other's girlfriends had been played many times before.

But Aaliya didn't feel very forgiving. When she turned to zain her eyes were blazing in anger. "Do me a favor and drop yourself off the nearest cliff."

As she turned on her heel and walked away from him, away from the entire group, Zain's family burst into laughter.

Aaliya was nearly out of sight before Zain caught up with her.

"Aalu, honey-" he began.

"Don't speak to me." When he reached out for her, she said, "And don't you even think of touching me." She started walking again, zain beside her.

"What are you so angry about?"

"I've been trying to make a good impression on your family and you..."

"you make a fool of me by putting your brother up to pawing me in front of them. It was humiliating. Didn't you think about how I'd feel?"

"No," he said, smiling. "People can't tell us apart. I thought you'd think Zaid was me."

Pausing, she stared at him; sometime between yesterday and today his brain had fallen out of his head.

"Aalu, Zaid and I are identical twins. We're exactly alike, even down to moles and birthmarks."

Aaliya gave him a look that said, Tell me another one. "Zain, tell me," she said with great patience, "was the person who delivered you and your brother one of your relatives?"

"As a matter of fact she was, but what's that got to do with anything?"

Giving him a look of great patience, she explained. "Because, just like you, she's a liar. She lied to you and your whole family. Your brother doesn't look like you at all. If you're twins, you're fraternal twins, or maybe one of you is a nine-month baby and the other is an eight-month one. If that's the case, then you're just brothers, nothing else."

Zain gasped at her in disbelief. "Aalu, Zaid and I have won contests for being the most identical twins."

"Then the losers must have been different colors. Now would you mind-"

She didn't say any more because Zain grabbed her in his arms and began to kiss her, and when she tried to push him away, he wouldn't let her. "Aalu, sweetheart, I really didn't mean to humiliate you, honest. Zaid and I have been playing jokes on people since we were kids. It's a kind of initiation into the family."

"And I failed," she said gloomily.

He laughed. "Failed? You passed with glowing colors. Come on, let's go back to my family. You'll see how well you've passed."

She allowed him to keep his arm around her shoulders, allowed him to lead her back to the others, but as they reached the picnic tables, she saw Zaid talking to his mother. "Your brother touches me again and he'll be sorry."

Zain kissed her cheek. "No, I won't let him touch you." There was pride in his voice, such pride that Aaliya refrained from asking him why he had never bothered to tell her that he had a twin brother.

One thing Zain hadn't lied about was that his family would be pleased with her for knowing which brother was Zain. The fact that, as far as she could tell, none of them could tell Zain and Zaid apart made her understand why his family had not greeted Zain when he'd first arrived - they'd thought he was Zaid. It occurred to her to tell them all that they needed a good eye doctor if they thought Zain looked like his brother, because Zaid didn't look anything like Zain. In fact, Zaid was rather ordinary looking. He was handsome, yes, but he didn't have the beautiful mouth that Zain did, his hair wasn't as curly, he didn't move as Zain did, and Zaid was just a wee bit fat, not muscular like Zain was.

For the rest of the day, until sundown, Aaliya had to put up with one little test after another, with every family member except Zain's parents and Zunera referring to Zain and his brother by each other's names. Twice Zaid put his hand on Aaliya's shoulder, once when she had her back to him. Heavens, but the man didn't even feel like Zain

It was in the early evening, when the children were getting sleepy and the men had gathered away from the women to talk, that Aaliya had a chance to sit quietly on a chair and look at the group. There were more people here named Abdullah than Qureshi, but there were enough of each, and she'd spent enough time around both families that she was beginning to be able to tell them apart.

The Qureshi men and the Abdullah men were very different from each other, both physically and in their personalities. The Qureshis were taller, but the Abdullas were prettier. The Abah men, ranging in height from five eight to just six feet, were all big men, big and thick and heavily muscled. The men together looked like a convention of weight lifters or a crew of construction workers. What made them different, what set them apart from other brawny men, was the prettiness, in a way, of their faces: big eyes, full lips, the sweetest smiles imaginable. For all their size and muscle, not one of them looked as though he could hurt a fly.

The Abdullahs were men that a woman could curl up with, men a woman could go to for help, men a woman could trust to protect her, to pull her from a burning building without giving a thought for his own life. They were sexy men. Aaliya had no questions as to why each woman who married into the family seemed willing to bear a countless number of children. She had no doubt that every Abdullah father was close to his children from birth to first love to grandchildren. These weren't men who went off with the boys on Sunday afternoons. In fact, looking at them, Aaliya wondered if any Abdullah man who had children ever went anywhere without one of them. These were men who knew how to give and receive love, not just tell a woman he loved her, but really, truly love her through sickness, through the good times and the bad, through turmoil and peace, through sadness and happiness. The Abdullahs were men a woman could depend on to always be there, men a woman could trust.

The Qureshis men were different from their cousins, for the Qureshis were as elegant as the Abdullahs were down-to-earth. Aaliya thought that a Qureshi man would know if one made a mistake and said an opera aria was by Puccini when it was actually by Verdi. They'd know when a person goofed and used the butter knife on the fish. They'd recognize a Chanel copy from a Chanel. They were, without exception, quiet, reserved men, all of them tall, all of them handsome in a sharp sort of way, with unreadable eyes, sculptured cheekbones, and jaws that were almost belligerent. The only softness in their faces was their mouths. Aaliya couldn't help wondering if, when they fell in love, their whole faces softened. All in all, they were rather fierce-looking men, men who could lead in wars, men who would die protecting the men under them - or their wives and children, she couldn't help thinking.

She wondered what the private lives of the Qureshis were like, did they love with all the fierceness she saw in their eyes? She had no doubt that when they did fall in love the recipient was selected very carefully. Did the Montgomery men laugh? Did they cry? Did they play ball with their sons and talk to their daughters about their Barbie dolls? She wondered if she'd ever know the answers to her questions, for she knew without being told that Abdullah would allow a person to know only what he wanted a person to know about him.

"And what have you decided?" Suraiyya Abdullah asked, taking a chair next to her, making Aaliya aware that she had been watched and that Suraiyya knew what she was thinking. Maybe when suraiyya had been contemplating marrying Zain's father, she too had compared the two families.

"That I wouldn't mind having an affair with a Qureshi but I'd rather marry a Abdullah," she answered, then realized that what she'd said shouldn't have been said.

Suraiyya smiled, seeming to like the honesty of her answer. "Exactly the same conclusion I reached some time ago."

Aaliya looked down at hands. "You didn't... I mean..."

"I didn't, but I do like to mention Rizwan's oldest brother to Usman now and then." The women laughed together.

Later, as it began to grow dark, people started taking their leave of each other, and Aaliya realized that she felt at home with these people. As she helped clear the tables, all the leftover food to be taken to a homeless shelter, she chatted companionably with them.

Coming up behind her, Zain slipped his arms about her waist. "Okay, everybody, Aalu says she's never changed a diaper so who's going to lend us a kid overnight?"

"Me," said a Qureshi cousin.

"I will."

"zain, you can have both of my boys for as long as you want."

"How about my twins? She ought to learn on twins."

"I use cloth diapers, zain. And safety pins with little ducks on them. Aalu should learn on cloth diapers."

As Aaliya stood blinking at the deluge of offers, Zain said, "Take your pick."

"How many children may I take?" she asked.

That response brought a hush to the Abdullahs, for if there was one thing they were serious about, it was children. There were no wives in the Abdullah family who didn't have children, in fact, it was a joke of strutting pride that Abdullah men could impregnate any woman in the world, no matter what doctors had told her. They had impregnated women who were on the Pill and women who'd had IUDs inserted. One Abdullah, after six children, had had a vasectomy. When his wife became pregnant two years later, he'd had some doubts about her fidelity. After the child was born she'd insisted on having a DNA test to prove the child was his. He had apologized with a new house and a three-week trip to Paris where she'd bought a trunk full of new clothes. (Since then, some of the other Abdullah wives had been suggesting that their husbands get vasectomies.)

"You can take one or two or all of them," Zain said in response to her question.

Aaliya looked at the nearly silent group of people, at all of the children, ranging in age from a tiny creature that looked to be only minutes old to big, hulking teenagers who looked as though they were dying to get away from their relatives. She was seriously tempted by a fat, smiling baby about eight months old, but at last she pointed. "Those two."

Her choice was a couple of little boys about four years old who were far and away the dirtiest children at the picnic, their faces sticky, their hands and clothes looking as though they'd rolled in mud. But under the dirt were cherub faces with black curly hair and big, innocent eyes and mouths of sweetness.

When Aaliya chose the two boys, Zain let out a groan that made the whole family burst into laughter. She looked at Zain in question.

"Do you have to have those two?"

"Zain!"

"Those brats are Zaid'z boys, and they're bad even for Abdullahs. How about Juhaina's little girl? She's adorable."

Aaliya glanced at Juhaina's little girl, at the pretty child's clean dress, her angelic smile, then back at the twins who were at that moment trying to kill each other. "I want the boys."

As Zain groaned again, Zaid put his arm around his brother. "Ah sleep," Zaid said. "Sweet sleep. That's what I'm going to get tonight and you're not."

Zain turned to Aaliya. "Aaliya..." he began, but she stopped him.

"They remind me of you, and when they're cleaned up, I imagine they'll look just like you."

This brought more laughter from the family. Suraiyya smiled fondly at her two grown sons. "There is some justice in the world after all if it means you boys are going to have children as bad as you were. Yes, Aaliya, dear, zaid's boys are just like he and Zain were as children, and may heaven help you if you want to learn about children on those two."

After a noisy leave-taking, with lots of kissing and hugging and hundreds of invitations to come to Colorado and to Maine, Aaliya and zain set off toward Zain's house, each holding the hand of a dirty twin boy.

Later, at the house, Aaliya sent the boys into the garden to play while she prepared a late snack for them - and Aaliya got her first experience of what had made Zain groan when she said she wanted to take the twins.

It wasn't that they were bad children. They didn't play pranks on their elders or see what they could get away with. Truthfully they seemed to be happy with just each other and didn't seem aware that Aaliya and Zain were there. What caused the problem was that they were so very, very active and the fact that there were so very many of them.

Aaliya glanced out at the floodlit garden and saw one child climbing the fence, ready to fall to his death, while another child ran up the fire escape as fast as his stubby legs could carry him, while a third child was climbing up the side of the house, beside the fire escape, and was now at the top of the first story, also on the precipice of death. A fourth child was eating the roses, thorns and all, while number five was climbing onto a lawn chair that was balanced on one leg on the edge of the brick walkway.

"Zain!" Aaliya yelped in desperation as she stood at the glass doors and looked out in helplessness. "They're going to be killed - all eight of them. Or is it twelve?"

Zain didn't look up from his newspaper. "Those two are in a class all their own."

"I think you should-" she began her voice filled with fear since one child was now moving up the wall of the town house toward the second floor.

"You wanted them, now you have them."

Turning to Zain in disbelief, she saw that his face was hidden by the newspaper. Obviously he wasn't going to help her. She went outside into the garden to see what she could do to prevent the children from killing themselves.

Contrary to what it seemed, Zain was very aware of what was going on and very interested in what Aaliya was planning. Standing to one side of the glass doors, he unabashedly spied on her, watching as she at first tried talking to the boys as though they were adults, reasoning with them that they were on the very precipice of death and should control their baser urges. She suggested paper and colored pens and lemonade. When that had no effect, she gently tried to take a child down from the wall. Gentleness had no effect on the sturdy four-year-old who was now out of Aaliya's reach.

Watching, Zain saw that, for a moment, Aaliya seemed to have no idea what to do, but then his nephew gave it all away by laughing, letting Aaliya know that he saw her dilemma and was enjoying being the cause of it.

"You little scamp," she said, narrowing her eyes at him as the boy kept working his way up the rose trellis on the wall. In the next minute, Aaliya was after him, and the child, still laughing while his brother shrieked encouragement from the ground, led Aaliya on a chase across the side of the wall, like two crabs moving on a perpendicular surface.

Stepping into the yard, Zain was ready to catch one or the other of them should they start to fall, but Aaliya caught the child by the seat of his pants and the imp turned to look at her as if to say, Now what are you going to do? Zain could see that aaliya had no idea how to get the big kid down, but she was trying not to let the boy see that. He saw, and he delighted in her consternation.

"Are you going to let a four-year-old defeat you?" Zain asked from the ground.

Without looking down at Zain, Aaliya gave the child an I'm-bigger-than-you-and-I'm-going-to-win grin and the next minute she had him in her arms - all of what had to be a hundred pounds of him. Somehow, she got him to the ground. Of course Zain was there for those last few feet, catching them both in his strong arms when a rose branch broke and setting them upright on the lawn.

The minute the child's feet touched earth, he scampered off with his brother while Aaliya rubbed her arms. They were aching from the exertion and from hundreds of rose thorn scratches. "Now I understand why you lift weights. It's to prepare you for dealing with children. Do you think I should give them a bath?"

Smiling, Zain gave her a soft kiss and pulled her into his arms. "Zain, where are the boys?"

"Mmm," he said, caressing her back. "You said the bad word."

"Boys?' How is that a bad word?"

"No, you said, bath. They've disappeared, and you'll have to find them if you mean to clean those two up. Half the time Zaid admits defeat and throws them into a horse trough. His theory is that they'll take a bath when they discover girls, so why bother until then?"

She pushed away from him and when she looked at him, her mouth was set. "My grandmother dealt with gangsters, so I think I am capable of dealing with two little boys. What we need here is a cunning mind and the strength of Hercules. Stand over there," she ordered and when he was at one side of the garden, she said, "My goodness, it's Donatello and Michelangelo and Raphael and Leonardo right here in our garden!" When two dirty little boys appeared from nowhere, Aaliya grabbed one about the waist then the other. Bowing under the weight like an Olympic bar across a squatter's shoulders, she held on through ferocious wiggles.

"You fibbed!" one child yelled, startling Aaliya for she didn't know the boys could talk.

"Yes I did," she answered calmly. "I learned how from your uncle Zain. He's the best fibber in the world."

For a moment both boys stopped struggling to look at their uncle Zain with new respect, but he looked just the same, just like their dad, so he wasn't of much interest. They resumed their attempts to get away from Aaliya. She wasn't very big, but she seemed extraordinarily strong.

"You two are going to have a bath, then I'm going to read you a story and you're going to bed." When the boys kept struggling, nearly tearing Aaliya's arms out of their sockets, she said, "It's the goriest story you've ever heard. Lots of blood and people being chopped in half and-"

The boys stopped wiggling as they listened to Aaliya tell them about what she was going to tell them all the way up the stairs.

* * * * *
It was as she was bathing the twins, trying to get what looked like years of dirt off of them while they bashed each other with soap and washclothes and drenched Aaliya, that Zain stood in the doorway and watched her. The boys were so much alike, as zain said, down to moles and birthmarks.

"How are Zaid and I different?"

"Zain Abdullah, if you're fishing for compliments-" She broke off as she dodged a bar of soap flying through the air.

"Maybe I am, but wouldn't you be curious if all your life people had told you that you were identical to another person, then someone told you that you weren't even similar? How are we different?"

"He's smaller than you for one thing. And the expression in his eyes is different. You're... you're a nicer person than he is. Softer."

"Maybe when I look at you my eyes are different."

"Maybe." She turned toward him. "But your eyelashes are definitely longer. And curlier."

At that Zain laughed. "Curlier?"

Embarrassed, she turned away. "I knew I shouldn't have said anything. You are not like your brother."

"Not like him at all." Zain seemed to be satisfied with that as he left the bathroom, which was rapidly resembling a place that should apply for national relief.

After the boys were bathed and at long last in bed, she and Zain went to bed - together, in his bed. Aaliya was very tired and would have thought she could expend no more energy during the day, but she walked out of the bathroom wearing her white nightgown and took one look at Zain's eyes, and they were on each other ravenously, tearing at clothes and skin, mouths and hands everywhere.

It was an hour later that they lay side by side, sated, Aaliya's head on Zain's shoulder, his arms around her.

"This is all so new to me," Aaliya said. "I mean, I've done this... Sort of." She laughed. "Zain, the difference between sex with you and sex with my ex-husband is, as Mark Twain says, the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. I had no idea sex could be enjoyable, fun, and so very... fulfilling."

Zain said nothing.

Idly, she ran her fingers over the hair on his chest. "I guess you've done this a thousand times with a thousand different women. I guess this is nothing... unusual for you."

"Aalu, when I was fourteen my father gave me the first of many talks about using protection during sex. He talked to me about sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. Since then, every time I've gone to bed with a woman I've used protection, a thin little membrane that separated me from her. I've used it even if she said she was on the Pill or whatever. I'd rather be safe than sorry. Until last night I'd never been, I guess you could say, skin to skin with a woman before. Maybe you could even go so far as to say that I was a virgin until last night."

She was hesitant. "Was it better? Without, I mean?"

"Much better. Much, much, much better. Never experienced anything like it. Had no idea sex could be so good."

Holding up his hand, she looked at it, comparing it in size to her own caressing his fingertips with hers. "So now I guess, well, later, with other women you won't use any protection. You'll always want to be... skin to skin."

"That's true."

Her fingers laced with his and tightened. She could not let herself think of life without Zain, of Zain being with another woman.

"But then, Aalu," he said very softly, "I think the buck stops here."

She was afraid to ask what he meant, but his words made her heart beat faster. Then, abruptly, she turned toward him. "Zain! If you're not using any birth control, I could get pregnant!"

"Really?" He sounded as though he were unconcerned about the possibility of pregnancy, then just slightly, his hand tightened on hers. "Would you mind?"

She ignored his second question. "I think this is extremely irresponsible of you. You should have used something."

"Me? Why not you?"

"I would have, but that first time you didn't exactly give me time to think, and besides, I was a little too tipsy to think clearly."

He grinned down at her. "Know what the mating call of the southern belle is? Oooh, I'm sooo drunk."

"I'll get you for that," she said as she jumped on him, trying to tickle him, her nightgown wrapping around both of them.

But they were interrupted by two very clean little boys standing by the bed and staring at them. There was no need for the children to say anything because what they were feeling was in their eyes: They were away from home and their dad and they wanted reassurance. Neither Aaliya or Zain hesitated as they pulled the boys into bed with them. The children snuggled together like the two halves of an egg that they were between Zain and Aaliya and went to sleep instantly.

Aaliya had an idea that sleeping with children cuddled close was nothing new to Zain, but it was to her, and the feeling called to something deep within her.


"Zain," she whispered, "do you make twins?" She tried to make the question sound light, but she couldn't. She wanted Zain, and she wanted the children he could possibly give her.

Zain knew what she was asking: She wanted to know if the two of them could have kids together, and Zain knew that an affirmative answer from him was a lifetime commitment. But then he'd made a commitment the first night they'd made love and he'd used no birth control, which had been a very conscious decision on his part. "Probably," he said at last. "Want a couple?"

"I rather would, yes," she answered as though it were not the most important answer she'd ever given in her life.

Above the heads of the sleeping children, their fingers entwined, holding to each other tightly.

Woah...

Gosh ..this was such a cute chapter I loved how aaliya identified zaid from and zain and how she asked him to have twins and their romance I love them

wow it was an ausome update loved the family get togeather and zain twin was really aw striking and really the two twins were naughty little messy kids i really dont know how u write somuch it might be tiring u have really done a good job thanks for pm do continue soon plz